The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05] Read online

  * * * *

  Dark Terrors 3

  The Gollancz Book of Horror

  Edited By Stephen Jones &

  David Sutton

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  Contents

  Introduction

  The Editors

  Free Dirt

  Ray Bradbury

  Self-Made Man

  Poppy Z. Brite

  The Price

  Neil Gaiman

  Such a Nice Girl

  Storm Constantine

  Pieces

  Ray Garton

  Aunt Libby’s Grave

  Melanie Tem

  The Horror Under Warrendown

  Ramsey Campbell

  Skinned Angels

  Kathryn Ptacek

  The Windmill

  Conrad Williams

  Sharp Edges

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  This Is Your Life (Repressed Memory Remix)

  Pat Cadigan

  Little Holocausts

  Brian Hodge

  Fat Mary

  Julian Rathbone

  The Last Reel

  Dennis Etchison

  Everybody Needs Somebody to Love

  Mark Timlin

  Sous Rature

  Jay Russell

  Spanky’s Back In Town

  Christopher Fowler

  Estate

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Walking Wounded

  Michael Marshall Smith

  The Lost Boy Found

  Terry Lamsley

  * * * *

  Introduction

  Although he was never actually our in-house editor (that dubious pleasure belongs to the inimitable Jo Fletcher), through his role as Editorial Director, Richard Evans became our ‘spiritual guide’ when we moved our series of original horror anthologies from Pan Books to Victor Gollancz in 1995.

  Born in West Wales in 1950, Richard won a full scholarship to Oxford, where he studied Modern History and where he met his future wife, Ali. They were married in 1979 and had two children, Linnie and Stevie. After earning an MA in Social History at Sussex University, he decided against a career in teaching and entered the publishing industry in 1972 in the copy-writing department at Penguin Books.

  Following a short stay at Fontana as a non-fiction editor, he moved to Macdonald/Futura, where he became a fiction editor specializing in science fiction. After moving to Arrow to head up its science fiction line, he returned to Macdonald in 1984 as Editorial Director, where he launched the successful Orbit SF imprint with the help of Senior Editor Toby Roxborough. He quickly became one of Britain’s best-loved and most respected editors, nurturing the careers of such young writers as Paul J. McAuley, Mark Timlin, Mary Gentle, Michael Scott Rohan and many others.

  In the late 1980s, Richard moved to Headline for a couple of years, before taking over the prestigious Gollancz science fiction and fantasy list in 1990 when Malcolm Edwards moved to HarperCollins.

  A serious illness in 1994 resulted in him taking nearly a year off work, but he made a full recovery and triumphantly returned to Gollancz to launch the Vista mass-market paperback imprint.

  During a relaxed lunch the week before he left on a business trip to New York, Richard talked excitedly about our line-up for Dark Terrors 2 (which we had recently delivered). As always, he was positive about the number of newer writers we had included in the book, alongside such established names as Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley. He was also particularly thrilled that we were publishing a new story by Thomas Tessier, whose latest novel Fog Heart he and Jo had just acquired for Gollancz.

  Tragically, Richard didn’t live to see the publication of Dark Terrors 2. Upon his return from New York he was hospitalized with pneumonia and died a few days later on May 26th, 1996, at the ridiculously young age of forty-six.

  However, his enthusiasm and immaculate taste continue to help shape the series, and we shall endeavour to ensure that it will always live up to his expectations. This latest volume of Dark Terrors is therefore respectfully dedicated to the memory of Richard Evans, an outstanding editor and a fine friend . . .

  Stephen Jones and David Sutton

  May, 1997

  <>

  * * * *

  Free Dirt

  RAY BRADBURY

  The cemetery was in the centre of the city. On four sides, it was bounded by gliding streetcars on glistening blue tracks and cars with exhaust fumes and sound. But, once inside the wall, the world was lost. For half a mile in four directions, the cemetery raised midnight trees and headstones that grew from the earth, like pale mushrooms, moist and cold. A gravel path led back into darkness and within the gate stood a Gothic Victorian house with six gables and a cupola. The front porch light showed an old man there alone, not smoking, not reading, not moving, silent. If you took a deep breath, he smelled of the sea, of urine, of papyrus, of kindling, of ivory, and of teak. His false teeth moved his mouth automatically when it wanted to talk. His tiny yellow seed eyes twitched and his poke-hole nostrils thinned as a stranger crunched up the gravel path and set foot on the porch step.

  ‘Good evening!’ said the stranger, a young man, perhaps twenty.

  The old man nodded, but his hands lay quietly on his knees.

  ‘I saw that sign out front,’ the stranger went on. ‘“Free Dirt”, it said.’

  The old man almost nodded.

  The stranger tried a smile. ‘Crazy, but that sign caught my eye.’

  There was a glass fan over the front door. A light shone through this glass fan, coloured blue, red, yellow, and touched the old man’s face. It seemed not to bother him.

  ‘I wondered, free dirt? Never struck me you’d have much left over. When you dig a hole and put the coffin in and refill the hole, you haven’t much dirt left, have you? I should think...’ “

  The old man leaned forward. It was so unexpected that the stranger pulled his foot off the bottom step.

  ’You want some?’ said the old man.

  ‘Why, no, no, I was just curious. Signs like that make you curious.’

  ‘Set down,’ said the old man.

  ’Thanks.’ The young man sat uneasily on the steps. ‘You know how it is, you walk around and never think how it is to own a graveyard.’

  ‘And?’ said the old man.

  ’I mean, like how much time it takes to dig graves.’

  The old man leaned back in his chair. ‘On a cool day, two hours. Hot day, four. Very hot day, six. Very cold day, not cold so it freezes, but real cold, a man can dig a grave in one hour so he can head in for hot chocolate, brandy in the chocolate. Then again you get a good man on a hot day, he’s no better than a bad man in the cold. Might take eight hours to open up, but there’s easy digging soil here. All loam, no rocks.’

  ‘I’m curious about winter.’

  ‘In blizzards we got a ice-box mausoleum to stash the dead undelivered mail - until spring and a whole month of shovels and spades.’

  ’Seeding and planting time, eh?’ The stranger laughed.

  ‘You might say that.’

  ‘Don’t you dig in winter anyhow? For special funerals? Special dead?’’

  ’Some yards got a hose-shovel contraption. Pump hot water through the blade; shape a grave quick, like placer mining, even with the ground a ice pond. We don’t cotton to that. Use picks and shovels.’

  The young man hesitated. ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘You mean, I get scared ever?’

  ‘Well. .. yes.’

  The old man took
out and stuffed his pipe with tobacco, tamped it with a calloused thumb, lit it, and let out a small stream of smoke.

  ‘No,’ he said at last.

  The young man’s shoulders sank.

  ‘Disappointed?’ said the old man.

  ‘I thought maybe once . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, when you’re young maybe. One time . . .’

  ‘Then, there was a time!’ The young man shifted up a step.

  The old man glanced at him sharply. ‘One time.’ He stared at the marbled hills and the dark trees. ‘My grandpa owned this yard. I was born here. A gravedigger’s son learns to ignore things.’

  The old man took a number of deep puffs and said, ‘I was just eighteen, folks off on vacation, me left to tend things alone, mow the lawn, dig holes, and such. Alone, four graves to dig in October and a cold came hard off the lake, frost on the graves, tombstones like snow, ground froze solid.

  ‘One night I walked out. No moon. Hard grass under foot, could see my breath, hands in my pockets, walking, listening.’

  The old man exhaled frail ghosts from his thin nostrils. ‘Then I heard this sound, deep under. I froze. It was a voice, screaming. Someone woke up buried, heard me walk by, cried out. I just stood. They screamed and screamed. Earth banged. On a cold night, ground’s like porcelain, rings, you see?

  ‘Well.’ The old man shut his eyes to remember. ‘I stood like the wind off the lake stopped my blood. A joke? I searched around and thought, Imagination! No, it was underfoot, sharp, clear. A woman’s voice. I knew all the gravestones.’ The old man’s eyelids trembled. ‘Could recite them alphabetical, year, month, day. Name any year, and I’ll tell. 1899? Jake Smith departed. 1923? Betty Dallman lost. 1933? P.H. Moran! Name a month. August? August last year, buried Henrietta Wells. August 1918? Grandma Hanlon, whole family! Influenza! Name a day. August fourth? Smith, Burke, Shelby carried off. Williamson? He’s on that hill. Douglas? By the creek . . .’

  ‘The story,’ the young man urged.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The story you were telling.’

  ‘Oh, the voice below? Well, I knew all the stones. Standing there I guessed that voice out of the ground was Henrietta Fremwell, fine girl, twenty-four years, played piano at the Elite Theatre. Tall, graceful, blonde. How did I know her voice? I stood where there was only men’s graves. Hers was the only woman’s. I ran to put my ear on her stone. Yes! Her voice, way down, screaming!

  ‘“Miss Fremwell!” I shouted.

  ‘“Miss Fremwell!” I yelled again.

  ‘Deep down I heard her, only weeping now. Maybe she heard me, maybe not. She just cried. I ran downhill so fast I tripped and split my head on a stone, got up, screamed myself! Got to the toolshed, all blood, dragged out the tools, and just stood there with one shovel. The ground was ice solid. I fell back against a tree. It would take three minutes to get back to her grave and eight hours to dig to her box. The ground was like glass. A coffin is a coffin; only so much space for air. Henrietta had been buried two days before the freeze, been asleep all that time, using up air, and it rained just before the cold spell and the earth over her, soaked with rainwater, now froze. I’d have to dig maybe eight hours. And the way she cried, there wasn’t another hour of air left.’

  The old man’s pipe had gone out. He rocked in his chair, back and forth, back and forth, silently.

  ‘But,’ said the young man, ‘what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the old man.

  ‘Nothing?’

  Nothing I could do. That ground was solid. Six men couldn’t have dug that grave. No hot water near. And she might’ve been screaming hours before I heard, so . ..’

  ‘You did . . . nothing?’

  ‘Something. Put the shovel back in the toolshed, locked it, and went back to the house and built a fire and drank some hot chocolate, shivering and shivering. Would you have done different?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Would you have dug for eight hours in hard ice rock so’s to reach her when she was truly dead of exhaustion, cold, smothered, and have to bury her all over again? Then call her folks and tell them?’

  The young man was silent. On the porch, the mosquitoes hummed about the naked light bulb.

  ‘I see,’ said the young man.

  The old man sucked his pipe. ‘I think I cried all night because there was nothing I could do.’ He opened his eyes and stared about, surprised, as if he had been listening to someone else.

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ said the young man.

  ‘No,’ said the old man. ‘God’s truth. Want to hear more? See that big stone with the ugly angel? That was Adam Crispin’s. Relatives fought, got a writ from a judge, dug him up hoping for poison. Found nothing. Put him back, but by that time, the dirt from his grave mixed with other dirts. We shovelled in stuff from all around. Next plot, the angel with broken wings? Mary Lou Phipps. Dug her up to lug her off to Elgin, Illinois. More relatives. Where she’d been, the pit stayed open, oh, three weeks. No funerals. Meanwhile, her dirt got cross-shovelled with others. Six stones over, one stone north, that was Henry Douglas Jones. Became famous sixty years after no one paid attention. Now he’s planted under the Civil War monument. His grave lay wide two months, nobody wanted to utilize the hole of a Southerner, all of us leaning North with Grant. So his dirt got scattered. That give you some notion of what that “Free Dirt” sign means?’

  The young man eyed the cemetery landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where is that dirt you’re handing out?’

  The old man pointed with his pipe, and the stranger looked and, indeed, by a nearby wall was a sizeable hillock some ten feet long by about three feet high, loam and grass tufts of many shades of tan, brown, and burnt umber.

  ‘Go look,’ said the old man.

  The young man walked slowly over to stand by the mound.

  ‘Kick it,’ said the old man. ‘See if it’s real.’

  The young man kicked, and his face paled.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said the old man, looking somewhere else.

  The stranger listened and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ’Well, now,’ said the old man, knocking out the ashes from his pipe. ‘How much free dirt you need?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ said the old man, ‘or you wouldn’t have driven your lightweight delivery truck up by the gate. I got cat’s ears. Heard your motor just when you stopped. How much?’

  ’Oh,’ said the young man uneasily. ‘My backyard’s eighty feet by forty. I could use a good inch of topsoil. So...?’

  ’I’d say,’ said the old man, ‘half of that mound there. Hell, take it. Nobody wants it.’

  ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘I mean, that mound has been growing and diminishing, diminishing and growing, mixtures up and down, since Grant took Richmond and Sherman reached the sea. There’s Civil dirt there, coffin splinters, satin casket shreds from when Lafayette met the honour guards. Edgar Allan Poe. There’s funeral flowers, blossoms from ten hundred obsequies. Condolence card confetti for Hessian troopers, Parisian gunners who never shipped home. That soil is so laced with bone meal and casket corsages I should charge you to buy the lot. Grab a spade before I do.’

  ‘Stay right there.’ The young man raised one hand.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said the old man. ‘Nor is anyone else nearby.

  * * * *

  The half-truck was pulled up by the dirt mound and the young man was reaching in for a spade, when the old man said, ‘No, I think not.’

  The old man went on.

  ‘Graveyard spade’s best. Familiar metal, familiar soil. Easy digging, when like takes to like. So . . .’

  The old man’s head indicated a spade half-stuck in the dark mound. The young man shrugged and moved.

  The cemetery spade came free with a soft whispering. Pellets of ancient mound fell with similar whispers.

  He began to dig and shift and fill the
back of his half-truck as the old man, from the corners of his eyes, observed, ‘It’s more than dirt, as I said. War of 1812, San Juan Hill, Manassas, Gettysburg, October flu epidemic 1918, all strewn from graves filled and evicted to be refilled. Various occupants leavened out to dust, various glories melted to mixtures, rust from metal caskets, coffin handles, shoelaces but no shoes, hairs long and short. Ever see wreaths made of hair saved to weave crowns to fix on mortal pictures? All that’s left of a smile or that funny look in the eyes of someone who knows she’s not alive any more, ever. Hair, epaulettes, not whole ones, but one strand of epaulettes, all there, along with blood that’s gone to silt.’